The National Organization of Marriage's latest legal attempt to derail same-sex marriages in Oregon is drawing in the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Steven Shapiro, legal director of the ACLU with broad experience before the U.S. Supreme Court, has now joined the Oregon legal team defending same-sex marriages, said David Fidanque, executive director of the Oregon chapter of the ACLU.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who handles appeals of this kind coming from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has not yet said whether he wants to receive additional briefs in the case.

In any event, Kennedy could well rule on the NOM request within the next 24 to 48 hours, Fidanque said.

"We're not taking anything for granted," he added. "We haven't at any point in this case, and we're not doing it now."

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who has followed same-sex marriage litigation around the country, said he thought the NOM appeal was a "long shot."

Tobias contrasted the Oregon legal proceedings with that in Utah, where a federal judge in December struck down that state's bar on same-sex marriage. The ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court by the Utah attorney general, and the court granted a stay in January.

The attorney was "clearly a party in the case and had clearly appealed the ruling," said Tobias, "and NOM has none of those characteristics."

McShane denied NOM's attempt to intervene in the case, and none of the parties with legal standing has appealed McShane's decision. Instead, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who represented the chief defendants in the lawsuits that led to McShane's ruling, had urged the judge to rule that Oregon's constitutional prohibition violated the federal rights of gay and lesbian couples.